A short story by India-born author Salman Rushdie features in an anthology being brought out by 21 noted writers in a unique bid to battle AIDS.

Titled "Telling Tales", the anthology of short stories is scheduled to be released by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan here Dec 1, World AIDS Day.

The money raised by the book will go to charities that help those with AIDS in southern Africa.

Conceived and edited by the Nobel Prize winning South African author Nadine Gordimer, "Telling Tales" has stories by Gordimer, Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Susan Sontag, Woody Allen, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Amos Oz, Günter Grass, Chinua Achebe and 10 others.

Gordimer, who was inspired by what musicians were doing to help battle AIDS in Africa, wrote to 20 of her favourite authors, asking them to donate a story to the cause.

She was pleasantly surprised when all of them responded positively.

AIDS kills some 6,000 people each day in Africa -- more than wars, famines and floods.

Of the 34.3 million HIV/AIDS-afflicted people in the world, an estimated 24.5 million live in Africa.

--Indo-Asian News Service